If the recent pattern holds, China’s latest upturn will be short-lived.

“THE empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide.” This famous opening from “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, a classic Chinese novel, refers to the inevitable ebb and flow of dynasties over the centuries. The same principle, in less dramatic fashion, applies to the ups and downs of the economy. But in the past couple of years, the rhythm in China has been unusually fast: the economy, stumbling for a few quarters, must strengthen; strengthening for a few quarters, must stumble.For now, China’s economy appears to be strengthening again. Real growth edged down to 6.7% year on year in the first quarter, but that figure, subject to fiddling by the authorities, is treated with scepticism by analysts. Instead, they pay more attention to a range of indicators that tell a different story. First, nominal growth—to which corporate earnings are more closely tied—jumped to 7.2% year on year, up from 6% in the final quarter of 2015. Second, the revival of the property sector—the most important part of the economy—gathered pace: the prices of new homes increased by 3.1% in March from a year earlier, the fastest growth since mid-2014. Third, industrial output rose by 6.8% year on year in March, compared with a subdued 5.4% average over the previous two months.All this is far from the double-digit growth that once seemed so effortless in China, but it is nevertheless striking given investors’ gloomy outlook at the start of this year. Then concerns focused on surging capital outflows, the depreciating yuan and a swooning stockmarket. Now, all three are in much better shape. Foreign-exchange reserves increased in March, for the first time in half a year. The yuan has risen by nearly 2% against the dollar over the past three months, and the CSI 300, an index of Chinese blue-chip stocks, has climbed by 7% since the end of January.Yet anyone counting on a sustained upturn in the economy would do well to examine the pattern of the past few years. Since early 2012 Chinese growth has been trending downward despite a rapid sequence of ups and downs (see chart). The force behind these fluctuations is on-again-off-again policy support from the government. Determined to keep the economy growing in line with its annual GDP targets, officials have turned to fiscal and monetary stimulus when growth has faltered. Wary of overdoing it, they have pulled back when the economy has picked up.That might seem to be a feat of fearsomely effective central planning, but, worryingly, each leg-up in the mini-cycle has required a bigger push. The current rebound follows a boom in lending as well as a series of policy incentives that have fuelled a mammoth property rally in the biggest cities. Total new credit rose by 42% in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, the biggest increase in three years. New home prices in Shenzhen, a southern metropolis, soared by 62.5% year on year in March, while those in Shanghai rose 30.5%. When growth flags again, as many expect will happen later this year, the government will have less scope to boost it without raising an already towering debt load.In the meantime, regulators are trying to undo some of the excesses. They have started to crack down on leverage in the bond market, one of the main channels for new financing in recent months. Officials in big cities have also made it harder for speculators to buy homes. But appetite for the tougher reforms needed to energise China’s economy in the long term—deleveraging the financial system, breaking up state-owned monopolies and eliminating excess capacity in industry—is still wanting. Shen Jianguang, an economist with Mizuho Securities, believes the government will focus on reforms that support growth, such as providing more financing for business startups. It is reluctant to pursue the more difficult reforms, for fear of undermining growth. That means the next downshift in the mini-cycle is, like the current upturn, only likely to go so far.Some factors are beyond China’s control, however. A big question stemming from its rebound is how that will influence monetary policy in America. The Federal Reserve has refrained from increasing interest rates after an initial rise in December, with Janet Yellen, the Fed’s chair, highlighting risks from China as a prime reason for caution. Now that China is faring better, the path to a second rate increase in America ought to be clearer. But that might lead the dollar to rise and place renewed pressure on the yuan, which would risk stoking capital outflows and, in turn, fresh concerns about the health of the Chinese economy. If it all sounds a bit dreary, one should at least be grateful that the mini-cycle features none of the death and carnage so prominent in “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”.

LONDON – In recent weeks, the US Federal Reserve has buoyed markets by adopting a more gradual approach to policy normalization. Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s most recent public remarks, in late March, were more dovish than anticipated. And, at its last meeting, the Fed suggested that it would pursue two, rather than four, quarter-point interest-rate hikes in 2016.

In response, investors have sold the US dollar and bid up equity prices and US Treasuries, and commodities and emerging-market assets have surged.

At first glance, these developments are curious. For one thing, the Fed’s decision appears to be at odds with signs that US inflation is accelerating. If, as some have suggested, the Fed is responding to fears about global growth, it would not make sense that risk assets – above all commodities and emerging markets – are rallying. But there is a logical thread that explains these apparent inconsistencies, one that centers on a potentially high-stakes Fed gamble.

Before we get to that wager, it is worth considering other proposed explanations for the market rally. The first centers on monetary easing by the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan. But negative interest rates and flat yield curves harm banks’ earnings; links between extraordinary monetary policies and growth or inflation remain tenuous; and surely monetary policy is subject to diminishing returns by now.

Another view focuses on OPEC countries’ oil-supply restraint, claiming that it is helping to support oil prices and thus high-cost producers in North America. But this logic rests more on correlation than causation. OPEC has not decided to cut production, and only a handful of its members have agreed to freeze output. A genuine reduction in global excess supply awaits a decline in output, as existing wells, deprived of capital investment, run dry.

A more plausible explanation for improved market performance is waning pessimism. Fears of recession in the United States, the United Kingdom, or Germany – countries with full employment and rising real household incomes – were always a bit odd. So was the notion that financial-market gyrations would have the atypical impact of significantly denting household or corporate spending.

And in China – a country that may be experiencing slowing GDP growth, but is nowhere near recession – rising household income and consumption are helping to offset the decline in fixed-asset investment.

This brings us back to the Fed and its gamble. Policymakers’ change of heart likely arose from a re-think about slack in the US economy, especially in the labor market. Indeed, in her recent remarks, Yellen noted that the labor-force participation rate had “turned up” and that “room for improvement” remained. If the Fed now believes that the economy has greater capacity for above-trend expansion without generating much inflation, it can, to paraphrase John Lennon, “give growth a chance.”

Faster growth and slower policy tightening are great news for asset prices. A gentler Fed also means less risk of dollar appreciation – an unambiguous benefit for commodity markets and dollar-indebted emerging economies. Finally, a stable dollar takes pressure off the renminbi, which should slow outflows of “hot” capital from China, removing another source of risk from the global financial system. Given these implication, it is little wonder that markets turned up.

But with US core inflation on the rise, the Fed is taking a big risk. After all, the core consumer-price index is already at 2.3%, led by 3.1% inflation in services (both figures are up by more than half of a percentage point year on year). Housing inflation, which comprises about a quarter of the CPI index, has also accelerated, to 3.2%. And price growth in health-care services, which had slowed in recent years, has jumped to 3.9%, double the rate recorded a year ago.

The Fed prefers to watch core “private consumption expenditure” inflation, which stands at a more subdued 1.7%. PCE goods prices are still falling, and services prices are rising just 2.1%, roughly unchanged over the past year.

But the focal point for the Fed is the labor market. According to a March report, the civilian participation rate has increased by half a percentage point from its September 2015 lows, and now stands at 63%. The same survey indicates that nearly six million Americans, who are not currently in the labor force, want to work. Another six million are working part-time for economic reasons.

In part, low levels of US labor-force participation reflect structural factors. Nearly every sub-category – by gender, education level, age cohort, or race – has been declining in the US since 2000. Yet labor supply is typically also cyclical, picking up as the economy improves and job opportunities arise.

Until now, that cyclical pattern has been absent in the post-crisis “new normal.”

What might an increasingly elastic labor supply mean for Fed policy? The answer depends on how much surplus labor is available. Suppose it is 1.5 million workers – a conservative figure that would still leave the civilian employment-to-population ratio well below its post-war peak.

At plausible rates of US job creation, it would take 12-18 months to absorb those new entrants.

That labor influx would dampen wage and price pressures, allowing the Fed to proceed gradually with interest-rate normalization. The bigger the pool of available labor, the longer the Fed can go slow.

This recalls former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan’s experiment in the late 1990s, when he let the US economy boom, on the hunch – which proved to be right – that productivity was accelerating. Might Yellen be willing to make a similar wager on labor supply?

For now, the politics of populist discontent – from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to the potential of a British exit from the European Union – are capturing the world’s attention.

But the US employment and inflation reports are the real sources of clues about the future. It is there that one should look for the factors most likely to drive the biggest wagers – for policy and for markets alike.

In 2000, the U.S. jobless rate was 4%, despite a trade imbalance larger than today’s. How could that be?

By Alan S. Blinder.

International trade is, once again, a hot-button political issue, making this an unpropitious time for rational discourse about the subject. Nonetheless, here are five issues on which the overwhelming majority of economists, liberal and conservative, agree.1. Most job losses are not due to international trade. Every month roughly five million new jobs are created in the U.S. and almost that many are destroyed, leaving a small net increment. International trade accounts for only a minor share of that staggering job churn. Vastly more derives from the hurly-burly of competition and from technological change, which literally creates and destroys entire industries. Competition and technology are widely and correctly applauded—international trade is not so fortunate.2. Trade is more about efficiency—and hence wages—than about the number of jobs. You probably don’t sew your own clothes or grow your own food. Instead, you buy these things from others, using the wages you earn doing something you do better. Imagine how much lower your standard of living would be if you had to sew your own clothes, grow your own food . . . and a thousand other things.

The case for international trade is no different. It’s not mainly about creating or destroying jobs. It’s about using labor more efficiently, which is one key to higher wages.But there is a catch: Whenever trade patterns change, some people will gain (either jobs or wages) but others will lose. The federal government could and should help them more, but it doesn’t. So Americans who do lose their jobs due to international trade have a legitimate gripe.3. Bilateral trade imbalances are inevitable and mostly uninteresting. Each month I run a trade deficit with Public Service ElectricPEG-2.41% & Gas. They sell me gas and electricity; I sell them nothing. But I run a bilateral trade surplus with Princeton University, to which I sell teaching services but from which I buy little. Should I seek balanced trade with PSE&G or Princeton? Of course not. Neither should countries. 4. Running an overall trade deficit does not make us “losers.” The U.S. multilateral trade balance—its balance with all of its trading partners—has been in deficit for decades. Does that mean that our country is in some sort of trouble? Probably not. For example, people who claim that our trade deficit kills jobs need to explain how the U.S. managed to achieve 4% unemployment in 2000, when our trade deficit was larger, as a share of GDP, than it is today.A trade deficit means that foreigners send us more goods and services than we send them. To balance the books, they get our IOUs, which means they wind up holding paper—U.S. Treasury bills, corporate bonds or other private debt instruments. That doesn’t sound so terrible for us, does it?One exceptional country—the U.S.—is the source of the world’s major international reserve currency, the U.S. dollar. Since ever-expanding world commerce requires ever more dollars, the U.S. must run trade deficits regularly. That’s sometimes called our “exorbitant privilege,” since we get to import more than we export.5. Trade agreements barely affect a nation’s trade balance. Much of the political angst is directed not at trade in general, but at specific international trade agreements. The North American Free Trade Agreement allegedly shipped U.S. jobs to Mexico; the Trans-Pacific Partnership will allegedly ship U.S. jobs abroad as well. There is a grain of truth here. Some U.S. jobs were indeed destroyed when Nafta liberalized trade with Mexico—and those people deserved better treatment from the government than they got. But Nafta also created a number of new jobs in the U.S. (See No. 2.)But there’s more. “Trade” and “trade agreements” are not synonyms. We traded with Mexico long before Nafta, and that trade was growing. Our trade with China has burgeoned in recent decades without a succession of trade agreements.Most fundamentally, but least understood, a nation’s overall trade balance is determined by its domestic decisions, not by trade deals. Think about the accounting involved here.As noted above, borrowing from abroad is the bookkeeping counterpart of running a trade deficit. One implies the other. The amount we borrow from abroad must equal the gap between our total spending as a nation (including government spending) and our total income (including the government’s income from taxation). Spendthrift nations like the U.S. have trade deficits because we don’t save much. But these saving decisions are domestic; they do not derive from trade agreements.America’s chronic trade deficits stem from the dollar’s international role and from Americans’ decisions not to save much, not from trade deals. Trade deficits are not a major cause of either job losses or job gains. But some people do lose their jobs from shifting trade patterns; and the government should do more to help them. Importantly, trade makes American workers more productive and, presumably, better paid. Now, would someone please tell this to Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump?

Mr. Blinder, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, is an informal policy adviser to the Hillary Clinton campaign.

A Russian Su-24 jet makes a close-range and low-altitude pass near the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea on April 12. Russia sometimes uses close interceptions to deter U.S. craft without sparking outright combat.(U.S. Navy)

Summary

Since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, tension with the West has been high, affecting eastern Ukraine, Syria and hot spots across the former Soviet sphere. Less overtly, Moscow has been working to protect areas vital to Russian interests by raising the stakes of U.S. operations there. This has manifested in numerous aggressive interceptions of U.S. military aircraft in flight, especially over the Black and Baltic seas. The interceptions, which are reportedly occurring more frequently, aim to dissuade Washington from operating in that airspace.

AnalysisOn April 14, a Russian Su-27 fighter jet performed a barrel roll maneuver over a U.S. Air Force RC-135 spy plane flying in international airspace over the Baltic Sea. Just three days earlier, two Russian Su-24 bombers flew dangerously and repeatedly close to a U.S. destroyer, also in the Baltic Sea. The most recent intercept came less than a week before the NATO-Russia Council is set to convene for the first time since 2014. Along with the fighting in Ukraine and Afghanistan, military transparency and risk reduction — timely and relevant topics given the interception incidents — will be up for discussion at the meeting.Not all interceptions are aggressive. In fact, the tactic is standard practice among militaries, both in the air and at sea. Around the world, aircraft and ships from a multitude of countries routinely intercept, visually inspect and escort other aircraft and maritime vessels passing through sensitive airspace or waters. Air forces, navies and coast guards worldwide regularly perform intercepts of this kind to enforce an air defense identification zone such as that in the East China Sea, to police operations such as NATO's Baltic Air Policing mission or, as necessary, to conduct ad hoc tactics. In these capacities, interceptions are almost invariably non-threatening; they are simply a means by which nations enhance their situational awareness and protect against contingencies.But some interceptions deviate from the norm. In a deliberate ploy to deter a nation's forces from transiting a specific space, aircraft or ships may display aggressive maneuvers, harassing and intimidating targets. These interceptions resemble a high-stakes game of chicken, daring the foreign craft to continue on its route, despite the increased risk of collision, or back down.Though the tactic carries a risk of damage to both sides, the initiator holds the advantage. Usually in aerial interceptions, a sleek, fast fighter jet targets a lumbering bomber or reconnaissance plane. The initiator of the encounter is often far less valuable — in monetary cost and in the number of flight crew aboard — than the intercepted target, raising the stakes for leaders (and crew) as they decide how to respond. As a fighter jet carries out dangerous maneuvers around it, the target is left to wonder about the interceptor's intentions and skill.For Russia, close interceptions offer a means to deter U.S. craft without sparking outright combat. The tactic has worked for Moscow already: In July 2014, a Russian jet's aggressive flight so alarmed the crew of a U.S. RC-135 over the Baltic Sea that it accidentally fled into Swedish airspace to evade the interceptor.But close intercepts do not always go as planned. In the April 2001 Hainan Island incident, for example, a collision during a close intercept left a Chinese pilot dead, his J-8II interceptor destroyed and a U.S. EP-3E signals intelligence aircraft seriously damaged. A number of Cold War-era close intercepts also caused collisions, particularly between ships. This led to the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Incidents at Sea Agreement, which sought to reduce the chances of collision and manage escalation when collisions did occur. Further efforts to limit the risk of escalation produced the 2014 Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea, which included Russia and China, as well as a 2014 agreement between the United States and China to regulate incidents between the two.But the past few years have demonstrated that the agreements are not enough to stop such dangerous close encounters, at least not between the United States and Russia. And given the substantial tension between the two countries, a midair or at-sea collision resulting from a close interception could trigger retaliatory measures, leading to an escalation that neither side wants. Even so, as long as tension persists between Russia and the United States, the interceptions are likely to continue.

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best informationThe second half of the 20th century saw the biggest increase in the world's population in human history.Our population surged because:

Medical advances lessened the mortality rate in many countries

Massive increases in agricultural productivity because of the "Green Revolution"

The global death rate has dropped almost continuously since the start of the industrial revolution - personal hygiene, improved methods of sanitation and the development of antibiotics have all played a major role.The term Green Revolution refers to a series of research, development, and technology transfers that happened between the 1940s and the late 1970s.The initiatives involved:

Development of high yielding varieties of cereal grains

Expansion of irrigation infrastructure

Modernization of management techniques

Mechanization

Distribution of hybridized seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers

Tractors with gasoline powered internal combustion engines (versus steam) became the norm in the 1920s after Henry Ford developed his Fordson in 1917 - the first mass produced tractor. This new technology was available only to relatively affluent farmers and it was not until the 1940s tractor use became widespread.Electric motors and irrigation pumps made farming and ranching more efficient. Major innovations in animal husbandry - modern milking parlors, grain elevators, and confined animal feeding operations - were all made possible by electricity.Advances in fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, antibiotics and growth hormones all led to better weed, insect and disease control.There were major advances in plant and animal breeding - crop hybridization, artificial insemination of livestock, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).Further down the food chain came innovations in food processing and distribution.All these new technologies increased global agriculture production with the full effects starting to be felt in the 1960s.Cereal production more than doubled in developing nations - yields of rice, maize, and wheat increased steadily. Between 1950 and 1984 world grain production increased by over 250% - and the world added over two billion more people to the dinner table.The Green Revolution

The modernization and industrialization of our global agricultural industry led to the single greatest explosion in food production in history. The agricultural reforms and resulting production increases fostered by the Green Revolution are responsible for avoiding widespread famine in developing countries and for feeding billions more people since. The Green Revolution also helped kick start the greatest explosion in human population in our history - it took only 40 years (starting in 1950) for the population to double from 2.5 billion to five billion people.Norman Borlaug, an American scientist, is often called the Father of the Green Revolution (GR). In 1943, he began conducting research in Mexico regarding developing new, disease resistant high yielding varieties of wheat. Mexico then combined Borlaug's wheat varieties with the agricultural technologies being developed at the time and was able to become a wheat exporter by the 1960s - prior to Mexico's Green Revolución the country was importing almost half of its wheat supply.Improving seeds is what people have been doing since the beginning of agriculture - people selected the biggest seeds that were easiest to thresh and stored them for planting the next crop. But in Mexican test plots something special happened - improved varieties of short stemmed wheat dramatically increased yields.

"Borlaug's innovations would change wheat production worldwide forever. Borlaug began by tackling stem rust, a highly contagious mold-like fungus that breeds on a variety of grasses and transfers to wheat just as it comes to maturity. Stem rust could ruin entire fields of wheat at once. After extensive testing, MAP staff discovered that while foreign varieties were more resistant to stem rust than native wheat varieties, foreign varieties tended to mature late in the season. Furthermore, higher-yielding wheat varieties were more rust-susceptible than lower-yielding ones.

The MAP wheat program made three key discoveries. First, enhancing soil, particularly through nitrogen supplementation, increased wheat yield even with ongoing stem rust problems. Second, to make new hybrid crosses, in 1945 Borlaug began "shuttle-breeding," or moving seed from Chapingo, with its early growing season, to Sonora, which had a later growing season. Shuttle breeding cut development time in half and fostered varieties that could thrive across a variety of conditions. Finally, Borlaug began working with "Norin" dwarf wheat imported from the U.S., a short straw variety that was both rust-resistant and higher yielding. When it was incorporated into the elaborate crosses already developed, wheat production rose dramatically. Mexico became self-sufficient in wheat production by 1956, and in MAP's first twenty years, Mexico tripled its wheat production." The Mexican Agriculture Program (MAP),

What makes these improved plants successful are:

Plants with the largest seeds were selected for breeding to create the most production

By maximizing the seed or food portion of the plant, the plant is able to use photosynthesis more efficiently because the energy produced during this process went directly to the food portion of the plant

By selectively breeding plants that were not sensitive to day length, researchers doubled a crop's production because the plants were not limited to certain areas of the globe based solely on the amount of light available to them

These high yield plant varieties need:

Fertilizers

Irrigation

Pesticides

The "revolution" in Green Revolution is well deserved. The new seeds along with chemical fertilizers, pesticides and more irrigation replaced traditional farming practices in many areas of the world.The Green Revolution's use of hybrid seeds, irrigation, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fossil fuels, farm machinery, and high-tech growing and processing systems combined to greatly increase agriculture yields. The Green Revolution is responsible for feeding billions - and likely enabling the birth of billions more people.Unfortunately the high yield growth is tapering off and in some cases declining. This stagnation, and in some cases decline, in productivity is due to a depleting natural resources base such as a steep fall in ground water table levels because irrigation has depleted water aquifers and chemical fertilizers and pesticides have impaired water quality, while their overuse has contributed to a deficiency of micro-nutrients in the soil and overall deteriorating soil health.Narrowly focusing on increasing production as the Green Revolution did cannot alleviate hunger because it failed to alter three simple facts;An increase in food production does not necessarily result in less hunger - if the poor don't have the money to buy food increased production is not going to help them.The most severe consequences of non-existent or more expensive staple foods are first felt in developing countries whose citizens spend an exorbitant percentage of their incomes feeding themselves and their family compared to families in the western world. Almost half of the planets population lives on less than $2.50 a day - roughly 1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25 per day. When food prices soar these people lack the money to feed themselves and their children - when your living on a couple of dollars a day, or less, and most of your income already goes to feed your family there's no money to cover a price spike in the cost of survival.Secondly, a narrow focus on production ultimately defeats itself as it destroys the base on which agriculture depends - topsoil and water.One of the most basic, fundamental problems we've created for ourselves is the impact of human activities on the land we need to cultivate for our very survival.

"The top 20cm of soil is all that stands between us and extinction." ~ Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the UNCCD

It takes 100 years to generate a single millimeter of topsoil - 24 billion tons of fertile soil disappear annually.Over the past four decades, 15 percent of the Earth's land area - an area larger than the United States and Mexico combined - have been degraded through human activities. Desertification doesn't refer to the advance of deserts which can and do expand naturally. Desertification is a different process where land in arid or semi-dry areas becomes degraded - the soil loses its productivity and the cover vegetation disappears or is degraded to the point where wind and water erosion can carry away the topsoil leaving behind a highly infertile mix of dust and sand.Land degradation, and the eventual resulting desertification of dry land ecosystems is most often caused by human activities such as:

Deforestation or clear-cutting of land - the tree and plant cover that binds the soil is removed

Misuse of water resources

Industrial activities

Climate change can accelerate and intensify the degradation process.And thirdly, to end hunger once and for all, we must make food production sustainable and develop secure distribution networks of needed foodstuffs.Our agriculture system is concentrated on producing a very few staple crops - there is a very serious lack of crop diversity. Corn, wheat, rice and soy are the main staples and production is oftentimes half a world away from where the majority of the crop would be consumed. The world's extreme poor exist almost exclusively on what is a 'buy today, eat today' plant based diet - wheat, corn, soy or rice provide the bulk of their calories.Taken together, this means if we get hit by a particularly bad harvest in one area, if a severe El Nino strikes, or more localized severe weather phenomena strikes, food supplies can get totally out of control in many countries.Considering that the global food supply chain is weak (easily disrupted by lack of transportation, weather, insurgency, stealing) and non-existent in many areas then you have a recipe for potential disaster in many regions of the world.If a person was so inclined they could bury their head in the sand and write off all of the above as nothing more than something someone in the poorer, undeveloped parts of the world has to worry about. After all we here in the west have our grocery stores and unlimited food supplies, right?That might not be prudent thinking.Western consumers are, for all intent and purposes, totally dependent on retail food stores for their subsistence. Yet these stores have only 2 - 3 days of inventory on hand at any one time. If any kind of a short term crisis hits, let alone a massive disruption in the food supply chain, stockpiling and hoarding will quickly empty store shelves.

Ecological Overshoot

For most of human history we've been consuming resources at a rate lower than what the planet was able to regenerate.Unfortunately we have crossed a critical threshold. The demand we are now placing on our planets resources appears to have begun to outpace the rate at which nature can replenish them.The gap between human demand and supply is known as ecological overshoot. To better understand the concept think of your bank account - in it you have $5000.00 paying monthly interest. Month after month you take the interest plus $100. That $100 is your financial, or for our purposes, your ecological overshoot and its withdrawal is obviously unsustainable.Today humanity uses the equivalent of 1.6 planets to provide the resources we use.The United Nations (U.N.) says if current population and consumption trends continue, by the 2030s, we will need the equivalent of two Earths annual resource production to support us. That's a lot of overshoot and it is in no way shape or form sustainable.

Conclusión

A day of reckoning is coming...According to the U.N. the world's population reached 7.3 billion as of mid-2015 and is growing by 1.18 per cent or 83 million people annually.Using the U.N.'s medium projection, not the highest nor the lowest, the medium projection says the world's population is expected to reach 8.5 billion in 2030, and to increase to 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100.Population growth, climate change and our destructive attitude towards our home, the Earth, and our wasteful use of her resources, are humanity's main concerns going forward.Here's a link to Norman Borlaugs Nobel Lecture, December 11th, 1970. It's a fascinating speech and one all of us need to read.Borlaug is on record saying the Earth, if we did everything right and technological advances kept improving yields, could support 10 billion people. Unfortunately yields have not kept pace, further technological advances are slow in coming, population growth in undeveloped countries is out of control and something Borlaug never had a chance to fully consider - the effects of global climate change, has in your author's opinion, vastly lowered the 10 billion figure.Our coming day of reckoning should be on all our radar screens. Is it on yours?If not, maybe it should be.

CHRISTMAS in New York was lovely this year — especially for those who prefer to spend the day working on their tans. It was the city’s warmest ever, with temperatures peaking at 66 degrees.

Record-breaking temperatures are occurring with alarming frequency in the United States, but Americans are reacting with a collective shrug. In a poll taken in January, after the country’s warmest December on record, the Pew Research Center found that climate change ranked close to last on a list of the public’s policy priorities. Why?

In a paper published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, we provide one possible explanation: For a vast majority of Americans, the weather is simply becoming more pleasant.

Over the past four decades, winter temperatures have risen substantially throughout the United States, but summers have not become markedly more uncomfortable.

Of course, people’s preferences about weather vary widely. Some want a snowfall every winter, while others would rather wear sandals year-round. So we sought to develop a measure of the average American’s weather preferences. To do this, we made use of research by economists who study local population growth in the United States. They have found that Americans have been moving to places with warm winters and cool, less humid summers. We made the inference (not true in every case, but reasonable to assume in general) that Americans prefer such conditions.

Then we evaluated the changes in weather conditions that Americans have experienced over the past four decades (i.e., roughly since climate change emerged as an issue in the public sphere).

Climatologists customarily report weather changes averaged over the land surface — an approach that counts changes in sparse Montana just as heavily as shifts in populous California. But because we were interested in the typical American’s exposure to weather, we took a different tack, calculating changes over time on a county-by-county basis, weighted by population.

Our findings are striking: 80 percent of Americans now find themselves living in counties where the weather is more pleasant than it was four decades ago. Although warming during this period has been considerable, it has not been evenly distributed across seasons. Virtually all Americans have experienced a rise in January maximum daily temperatures — an increase of 1.04 degrees Fahrenheit per decade on average — while changes in daily maximum temperatures in July have been much more variable across counties, rising by an average of just 0.13 degrees Fahrenheit per decade over all. Moreover, summer humidity has declined during this period.

As a result, most people’s experiences with daily weather since the time that they first heard about climate change have generally been positive. By our calculations, the mild winters now regularly experienced in New York City make its weather nearly as pleasant as that of Virginia Beach back in the 1970s.

To those of us who believe climate change is the most profound challenge of our age, our discovery is both illuminating and disheartening. In previous work, we’ve shown that Americans make sense of climate change in part through their personal experience of the weather. Our new findings suggest that the weather changes caused by global warming cannot be relied on to spur the public to demand policies that address the problem. By the time the weather changes for the worse later in this century, it may be too late.

And it will change for the worse. Under all likely scenarios, seasonal trends are projected to eventually reverse: Future warming in the United States will be more severe in summer than in winter. Should greenhouse gas emissions proceed unabated, we estimate that 88 percent of Americans will be exposed to less pleasant weather at the end of this century than they are today.

In order to more effectively raise awareness and increase public concern about climate change, our research suggests that we need to stop talking so much about rising temperatures. A focus on extreme weather events — which are easily understood by the public and have potentially much greater impact on human health and the economy — may be a better strategy.

And when we do discuss temperatures, we should acknowledge the temporarily pleasant side effects of global warming. But then we should stress that these agreeable conditions will one day vanish — like ice on a warm winter day.

Patrick J. Egan is an associate professor of politics and public policy at New York University. Megan Mullin is an associate professor of environmental politics at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

If you know the other and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

Sun Tzu

We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.